The first question was: Can for-profit corporations invoke religious liberty rights under RFRA? The court answered yes. HBO’s John Oliver nicely expressed the automatic liberal riposte, parodying the idea that corporations are people. It is very funny stuff.

It is not, however, especially thoughtful stuff. The court does not argue that corporations are just like real people. Rather, it argues that people often exercise faith collectively, in organizations. Allowing those organizations to assert religious-liberty rights protects the liberty of the persons acting within them. The obvious example is churches, usually legally organized as nonprofit corporations.

The real issue is not whether corporations of any type can ever claim protection under RFRA — sometimes they can. The issue is whether for-profit corporations can ever have enough of a religious purpose to claim that protection.

To me, as a professor of corporate law, liberal denial of this point sounds very odd. In my world, activists and liberal professors (like me) are constantly asserting that corporations can and should care about more than just shareholder profit. We sing the praises of corporate social responsibility.

Well, Hobby Lobby is a socially responsible corporation, judged by the deep religious beliefs of its owners. The court decisively rejects the notion that the sole purpose of a for-profit corporation is to make money for its shareholders. This fits perfectly with the expansive view of corporate purpose that liberal proponents of social responsibility usually advocate — except, apparently, when talking about this case.

He goes on to argue that the Hobby Lobby decision also advanced the liberal goal of tolerance of diversity within a pluralistic context. But the left doesn’t see that.

One chapter of the controversy is set to close on Monday, when President Obama plans to sign a long-awaited executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against gays and lesbians, according to a White House official. But the debate that began over that order’s provisions for religious nonprofits has spilled over into a broader conflict. Many prominent gay-rights groups have now withdrawn their support from a top legislative priority, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, over the religious exemption it contains.

“The religious exemption debate has now been polarized to the point where people are saying, ‘All or nothing,’” said Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, director of social policy for the center-left think tank Third Way, whose research and activism on gay marriage have been instrumental to that cause’s mainstream acceptance. “The narrative that’s now beginning to form is that Democrats are against religion. It’s not true, and it’s very dangerous.”

On what planet is Hatalsky living? Of course it’s true. It is obviously, incontrovertibly true. The Democrats are only “for” religion when it doesn’t threaten their other priorities. I wish it were not so, but I don’t see any way around it. For example, they are “for” progressive religious groups that accept their interpretation of gay rights, but not for tolerating religious groups that do not. Naturally one does not expect progressives, religious and secularist, to endorse religious beliefs and practices they find immoral or unpalatable, but toleration does not require endorsement. In fact, as Damon Linker has pointed out, liberalism requires broad tolerance if it is to be true to itself.

More from Molly Ball’s piece:

The larger fear is that such splits could bring back the bad old days when gay rights and religious rights were seen as irreconcilable—and liberals suffered politically for the image that they were alienated from religious values. The advocates in the middle of this debate hope too much progress has been made for the current controversy to undo it. Sharon Groves, director Human Rights Campaign’s religion and faith program, acknowledged the events of the past few weeks have created tension. But, she said hopefully, “The deep work has already begun to happen in faith communities. I don’t think we’re going to see a return to the old culture wars.”

They are irreconcilable — and honest scholars were saying this as far back as 2006. In this NYT report on the debate back then, the law professor, lesbian, and gay rights advocate Chai Feldblum, who now runs the EEOC, says that gay rights and religious liberty are ultimately irreconcilable — and in her view, gay rights must always win. Back then, Maggie Gallagher wrote the piece to read on this, reporting from a Becket Fund scholarly conference on gay rights and religious liberty. Excerpts:

Just how serious are the coming conflicts over religious liberty stemming from gay marriage?

“The impact will be severe and pervasive,” [Becket Fund head Anthony] Picarello says flatly. “This is going to affect every aspect of church-state relations.” Recent years, he predicts, will be looked back on as a time of relative peace between church and state, one where people had the luxury of litigating cases about things like the Ten Commandments in courthouses. In times of relative peace, says Picarello, people don’t even notice that “the church is surrounded on all sides by the state; that church and state butt up against each other. The boundaries are usually peaceful, so it’s easy sometimes to forget they are there. But because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter.”

For scholars, these will be interesting times: Want to know exactly where the borders of church and state are located? “Wait a few years,” Picarello laughs. The flood of litigation surrounding each point of contact will map out the territory. For religious liberty lawyers, there are boom times ahead. As one Becket Fund donor told Picarello ruefully, “At least you know you’re not in the buggy whip business.”

Gallagher says in reading all the papers from the Becket Fund conference, she noticed that those scholars who favored gay marriage were much more aware of the nature of the conflict than those who opposed gay marriage. Chai Feldblum, for example, said that both sides fail to appreciate what’s really going on in this struggle:

“Gay rights supporters often try to present these laws as purely neutral and having no moral implications. But not all discrimination is bad,” Feldblum points out. In employment law, for instance, “we allow discrimination against people who sexually abuse children, and we don’t say ‘the only question is can they type’ even if they can type really quickly.”

To get to the point where the law prohibits discrimination, Feldblum says, “there have to be two things: one, a majority of the society believing the characteristic on which the person is being discriminated against is not morally problematic, and, two, enough of a sense of outrage to push past the normal American contract-based approach, where the government doesn’t tell you what you can do. There has to be enough outrage to bypass that basic default mode in America. Unlike some of my compatriots in the gay rights movement, I think we advance the cause of gay equality if we make clear there are moral assessments that underlie antidiscrimination laws.”

But there was a second reason Feldblum made time for this particular conference. She was raised an Orthodox Jew. She wanted to demonstrate respect for religious people and their concerns, to show that the gay community is not monolithic in this regard.

“It seemed to me the height of disingenuousness, absurdity, and indeed disrespect to tell someone it is okay to ‘be’ gay, but not necessarily okay to engage in gay sex. What do they think being gay means?” she writes in her Becket paper. “I have the same reaction to courts and legislatures that blithely assume a religious person can easily disengage her religious belief and self-identity from her religious practice and religious behavior. What do they think being religious means?”

To Feldblum the emerging conflicts between free exercise of religion and sexual liberty are real: “When we pass a law that says you may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, we are burdening those who have an alternative moral assessment of gay men and lesbians.” Most of the time, the need to protect the dignity of gay people will justify burdening religious belief, she argues. But that does not make it right to pretend these burdens do not exist in the first place, or that the religious people the law is burdening don’t matter.

“You have to stop, think, and justify the burden each time,” says Feldblum. She pauses. “Respect doesn’t mean that the religious person should prevail in the right to discriminate–it just means demonstrating a respectful awareness of the religious position.”

Feldblum believes this sincerely and with passion, and clearly (as she reminds me) against the vast majority of opinion of her own community. And yet when push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she admits, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

Everything that has happened in the eight years since this conference vindicates the views of the pro-gay progressives. The right has been routed in the courts. Marc Stern, the general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, predicted then that some massive legal cases would be coming, including:

Finally, I ask Stern the big question on everyone’s mind. Religious groups that take government funding will almost certainly be required to play by the nondiscrimination rules, but what about groups that, while receiving no government grants, are tax-exempt? Can a group–a church or religious charity, say–that opposes gay marriage keep its tax exemption if gay marriage becomes the law? “That,” says Stern, “is the 18 trillion dollar question.”

Twenty years ago it would have been inconceivable that a Christian or Jewish organization that opposed gay marriage might be treated as racist in the public square. Today? It’s just not clear.

“In Massachusetts I’d be very worried,” Stern says finally. The churches themselves might have a First Amendment defense if a state government or state courts tried to withdraw their exemption, he says, but “the parachurch institutions are very much at risk and may be put out of business because of the licensing issues, or for these other reasons–it’s very unclear. None of us nonprofits can function without [state] tax exemption. As a practical matter, any large charity needs that real estate tax exemption.”

He blames religious conservatives for adopting the wrong political strategy on gay issues. “Live and let live,” he tells me, is the only thing around the world that works. But I ask him point blank what he would say to people who dismiss the threat to free exercise of religion as evangelical hysteria. “It’s not hysteria, this is very real,” he tells me, “Boston Catholic Charities shows that.”

More:

Marc Stern is looking more and more like a reluctant prophet: “It’s going to be a train wreck,” he told me in the offices of the American Jewish Congress high above Manhattan. “A very dangerous train wreck. I don’t see anyone trying to stem the train wreck, or slow down the trains. Both sides are really looking for Armageddon, and they frankly both want to win. I prefer to avoid Armageddon, if possible.”

So, when Molly Ball speaks of “the bad old days” when gay rights and religious liberty were seen as irreconcilable, I don’t understand what she’s talking about. What she really means, I think, is the days before homosexuality was as widely accepted by churches, so as to give a religious veneer to gay rights. The progressive religionists don’t see a conflict between religious liberty and gay rights because they have none, and don’t see any because they believe that orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims should violate their own scriptures and traditions to accept the pro-gay line. It is an ideological smokescreen to say that the idea that there’s a conflict between gay rights and religious liberty is an outdated concept of a past culture war. When the gay rights activist Sharon Groves tells Ball that she doesn’t foresee returning to “the old culture wars,” I agree in this sense only: a decade ago, the religious liberty side held much more ground, both in law and in public opinion. That’s gone.

The war could be averted if the left were to do as Stern suggested the right should have done when it held the high ground: adopt a live and let live attitude, consonant with pluralist democracy. The left can’t and won’t do that, because Error Has No Rights. The culture war will continue until there is total surrender. And the Democratic Party has chosen its side. This is true, and while it may be “very dangerous” in Hatalsky’s view, the danger consists in voters who prize religious liberty waking up and understanding what is happening to their rights, and who is pushing for it to happen. From a religious liberty perspective, these are the bad old days — and they’re getting worse.

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128 Responses to Hobby Lobby & ‘The Bad Old Days’

A large part of the reason theologians took over 1900 years to change their view of homosexuality is because it took that long for both scientific and social opinion to modify. From antiquity, we know that most believed homosexuality to be a rational choice people — primarily men — made within an otherwise heterosexual context. Anybody might commit homosexual acts, and that was judged either against nature and therefore sinful or neither here nor there and therefore possibly even commendable, given the general cultural outlook. Today, experience and science seem to indicate that, for most homosexuals, their sexual orientation is a given, something they have to live with, and rarely a matter of choice. Hence, the sea change in how others view their behavior.

The Bible, of course, was composed during the first age, as were the classical works of moral theology (e.g., those by Augustine and Aquinas).

Both views may be disputed on their merits, but claiming points for your side based on its roots in antiquity or “from the beginning doesn’t cut it as it once did. Somehow, I can see even the great Aquinas adapting himself to that fact and adjusting his argumentation accordingly.

If you understand that the fundamental though subconscious dispute among the upper class is over those who want to give the lower classes just enough money to prevent rebellion and those who believe that money is better spent on law enforcement to prevent said rebellion. Reasonable minds can differ on that question and thus you have your Democrats and your Republicans.

Wow. This is definitely the best summary of American politics I’ve seen. Touche!

“I suspect that there is going to come a time to pay the liberals back for breaking the back of conservative Christians, and liberal Christians and even gay Christians are going to be surprised to find themselves lined up against the wall with the conservatives.”

I’m genuinely curious: what do you think is the big reveal, the endgame of the dreaded liberal agenda? Loss of tax exemptions for churches? Forcing churches to conduct gay marriages? Bans on homeschooling?

“I’m genuinely curious: what do you think is the big reveal, the endgame of the dreaded liberal agenda?”

While there may be some legal issues but the major one will be making being a Christian AT ALL socially unacceptable in polite society, much as claiming to be a communist at all or being a racist at all is socially unacceptable.

Too much to comment on here & besides we’ve fought these battles ad nauseaum with a stalemate as the result. What did capture my attention is your comment about (I’m paraphrasing) the “Pink Police State” wanting to privilege how people organise their sex lives over religious liberty. Once again,to my mind at least,it seems that you’re reducing a gay individual’s reality to being solely about their sexual practices;yes,sex is usually a part of everyone’s life minus the small number who are asexual or celibate- it is a common denominator we share. But I think most of us have lives that comprise far more than sex and I find it curious that many people immeadiately think of sex if a person is gay whereas I look at it as incidental,just part of the whole. Wanting to avoid discrimination in employment,accommodation,civil law,etc isn’t about sex but about the dignity of the whole person.The celibate gay person can be discriminated against just as easily as the one who is sexually active. Liars,gluttons,those who take The Lord’s name in vain,etc are equally sinful so why is it that only the one group merits the right to be discriminated against? Should Sonic be able to tell the obese person ” Sorry,I believe you to be a glutton & as that is a sin I refuse to hire or serve you as I don’t want to endorse your sinful behaviour.Furthermore I believe your landlord should have the right to kick you out and the government should definitely restrict your right to marry as you might corrupt impressionable,innocent kids with your lifestyle”. Now if a church wants to enforce this no association with gluttons policy,that’s their right. But oddly they don’t nor do they think society should have the right to do so with impunity. I’m having fun with the Sonic/glutton analogy but seriously,there is no logic to elevating being gay above all other “transgressions”. I guess libertarians would be cool with this but most of us wouldn’t. When socons want to include all categories of sinners in their “we don’t want to deal with you” exemptions then I might be more receptive; but they don’t because we all sin in some way or another. With the level of obesity in this country it’s obvious that these sinners with their sinful behaviour & lifestyle pose a far greater threat to civilization than the gays. They’re making it socially & morally acceptable to be fat! Something must be done! I hope we can save all those people in the South from their hedonistic,wanton sinful ways and bring them back to godly eating habits. Maybe once we accomplish that we can work on their sinful divorce/serial marriage problem.
At least my snark is fun & tongue firmly in cheek!

I am a proponent of theological evolution (meaning I believe that Darwin was right about the process, but that it was God’s hand that allowed it to lead to man) I believe that gay people should have the legal right to marry.

Off-topic quibble:
If God’s hand led evolution to humans, then strictly speaking “Darwin” (let’s call it “biological science”) was right about the sequence of events but not about the process.

“Again, this is not an issue of persecution. Christians are simply mourning the loss of their privileged place in the public square. They used to live in a culture that largely agreed with them on social issues, so there was less of a disjunction between the church community and that outside the church. That’s not the case any more. Get over it.”

I am so sick of this tired strawman.

Bobby I’m not saying only Christians shouldn’t be compelled to take on clients they find morally objectionable so therefore I am NOT talking about a loss of privilege. I don’t believe a black caterer has implicitly said that they will cater a party for the KKK just because they went into business. I am not saying a homosexual florist should be required to provide flowers to the Westboro Baptist church.

Opening up a business shouldn’t compel ANYBODY to do something they find morally repugnant.

VikingLS: If you heard somebody say “Christianity is a sexist, racist, anti-intellectual religion” would you simply take it for granted that this is true rather than study the topic? If (so), don’t bother me.

Personally, if I heard someone say that, I would first wince a little, because it’s overly broad and is probably meant to imply that Christians are inherently sexist, racist, etc. But I would also generally agree, not because I took it for granted, but because I was raised by racist, sexist evangelical Christians in a racist, sexist, evangelical church. So shoot me.

I feel like I am supposed to accept the idea that Christianity is unforgivably complicit in every single sin of western society including slavery, the Nazis, and any number of conquests of indigenous people.

Well, I think what you’d do well to accept is that Christianity is implicated in these things, and is also historically represented in their opposition, as you note. The trouble with “Christianity”, writ large, is that it tends to find itself on both sides of most issues, and turns out to be an unreliable guide for ethics, especially in a pluralistic society. The good news, of course, is that no matter how things turns out, Christianity always wins and emerges looking like it was right all along. At least, that’s how it seems to look to Christians…

So I would recommend that you follow your conscience, then find justification in scripture. Just like most of your fellow adherents do.

“While there may be some legal issues but the major one will be making being a Christian AT ALL socially unacceptable in polite society, much as claiming to be a communist at all or being a racist at all is socially unacceptable.”

While this is undoubtedly true, there is also the matter of marginalization. Following French historian Alain Besancon’s summary of how Communism eliminated its enemies, one can say that first there will be political marginalization, then cultural marginalization then finally personal marginalization. Some of this will overlap of course. But the endgame is to remove any traditional moral or religious buffers which stand between the omnicompetent corporate state and the autonomous individual.

By the way, this marginalization is not necessarily bad in and of itself. Christ in effect promised such. But it should not be occurring in a nation which has freedom of religion written into its Constitution. This inconsistency is what bothers religious traditionalists, much moreso than any “loss of hegemony” or marginalization/ostracism per se.

Re: But I would also generally agree, not because I took it for granted, but because I was raised by racist, sexist evangelical Christians in a racist, sexist, evangelical church.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe your personal experience is rather unimportant and besides the point? And that rather than relying on navel-gazing ruminations on personal anecdotes, you should actually study the issue? You might be surprised.

“While there may be some legal issues but the major one will be making being a Christian AT ALL socially unacceptable in polite society, much as claiming to be a communist at all or being a racist at all is socially unacceptable.”

No, as pointed out numerous times, Christians are a majority in this country and will remain so for for the forseeable future.
There is a subset of Christians that are a minority but seem to be motivated by fundamentalism, theocracy or racism.

This small minority of Christians claim to speak for all Christians and claim that other Christians who disagree with them are not true Christians.

This subset includes, for example, YEC types that do tremondous dmage to our educational system.

This subset is likely to be scorned but that is scarcely something to complain about. Jews, Catholics, Musims, Hindus and Atheists are similarly scorned by these Christians. This scorn is a manifestation fo our freedom of religion and freedom of assocciation–it’s a feature, not a bug, of the American way.

Today, experience and science seem to indicate that, for most homosexuals, their sexual orientation is a given, something they have to live with, and rarely a matter of choice. Hence, the sea change in how others view their behavior.

Boy, this one always confuses me. The exact same sea change in scientific opinion happened with alcoholism; in the old days, it was a moral failing, whereas there has been a big push to see it as a matter of addiction and physiology rather than choice.

Which has not in any way led to an acceptance of alcoholism*.

Homosexuality doesn’t hurt anybody (At least, no more than heterosexuality does), and that’s why it should be accepted. It is entirely possible for a natural biological process (e.g. drug addiction, mental illness) to be seen as a bad thing.

*It has, arguably, led to an acceptance and compassion for alcoholics that older ways of thinking didn’t. But the behavior, the alcoholism itself, is still unacceptable, and we make every effort to eliminate it, in a humane way. Much like the Christian love the sinner hate the sin crowd want to eliminate homosexuality. A view of homosexuality as sin is completely compatible with a view that homosexuals are “born that way” and, conversely, a view of homosexuality as acceptable and healthy is entirely compatible with the view that homosexuality is a choice.

If God’s hand led evolution to humans, then strictly speaking “Darwin” (let’s call it “biological science”) was right about the sequence of events but not about the process.

Not so. The physical and biochemical processes are what they are. Look up C.S. Lewis on the fact that when a prayer is answered, there is a measurable series of physical events that are necessarily part of the answer to a prayer. Thus, an answered prayer can be just as good evidence that prayer doesn’t work as an unanswered prayer, because “it would have happened anyway.”

As Albert Einstein said, “The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not.”

Re: Opening up a business shouldn’t compel ANYBODY to do something they find morally repugnant.

I’ve said this before. I think there is a clear line between refusing actions (e.g., a doctor refusing to perform abortions) and refusing people because of who they are. The former is moral choice and should be given very wide permit, latter is bigotry and should not be acceptable.

Clearly, something being a natural process doesn’t in itself make it a good thing. Some doings of nature seem downright cruel and destructive. Still, when society accepted homosexuality as an unchanging element in some people’s nature, that fact alone undermined a large part of what many found wrong about homosexual behavior, i. e., that some would choose to have what seemed to be a perverted form of sex to satisfy out-of-control lustful urges when they could instead limit themselves to sex inside (heterosexual) marriage like everyone else. Take away the assumption of “normal“ marriage as a clear alternative, and a lot of people (with the exception of those who accept biblical rules or church doctrine on face value) began questioning “traditional“ thinking about the whole issue. Then as more and more gays “came out,“ revealing themselves to be “normal“ in every other way, and speaking of lifelong same-sex partners (not to mention showing a devotion in every way similar to that of “normal“ spouses when so many died publicly of AIDS), the general perception grew that this was not a “sin“ in the sense that, say, adultery or pornography or even simple premarital “hookups“ still seemed. Or at least gay sex that involved love and lifelong commitment no longer fit that bill. Accepting the idea of gay marriage was the next step in this rational progression.

From the standpoint of logic, whether or not homosexuality is a natural process or rational choice may be superfluous, but for those starting from the assumption that it is merely a perversion, it matters, at least as a first step in unraveling their previous point of view.

I suggest using this as the title for this blog, ha! “Rod Dreher: these are the bad old days – and they’re getting worse!” Maybe add the exclamation point and italicize the “worse” instead of the “these”.

I suggest using this as the title for this blog, ha! “Rod Dreher: these are the bad old days – and they’re getting worse!” Maybe add the exclamation point and italicize the “worse” instead of the “these”.

“when society accepted homosexuality as an unchanging element in some people’s nature, that fact alone undermined a large part of what many found wrong about homosexual behavior”

That’s exactly backwards. There was a strong push for acceptance of those behaviors as “normal” (the breaking of sexual taboos) starting with Kinsey and then continuing on through the 80s and 90s with the ever-increasing spread of pornography, including gay and lesbian porn.

So, while the agents of the “Will and Grace Effect” were busy mainstreaming homosexual people by depicting them as “normal in every other way,” the porn industry and pop psychology had long been active in mainstreaming the behaviors associated with homosexuality. When the time came to “accept” the people and their “love,” the way had already been cleared for condoning the behaviors.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe your personal experience is rather unimportant and besides the point? And that rather than relying on navel-gazing ruminations on personal anecdotes, you should actually study the issue?

Excellent standard Hector. If only that were a mandatory filter for considering whether a paper is worthy of publication (academically speaking).

I think there is a clear line between refusing actions (e.g., a doctor refusing to perform abortions) and refusing people because of who they are. The former is moral choice and should be given very wide permit, latter is bigotry and should not be acceptable.

I think maybe we agree, JonF, but then again, maybe not. You fall short of clearly defining what constitutes “refusing people because of who they are.”

E.g., I would offer that if someone walks into a bakery, the staff have no business asking “what is your sexual orientation?” or, even if that is public knowledge, refusing to sell them whatever is on display. But, if a customer walks in and asks for a cake decorated with two penises and a frosted message “Adam and Steve, united for life, Happy Wedding Day,” a baker’s refusal to fulfill the order is on the same MORAL level as a doctor refusing to perform an abortion.

Lawyers grow rich adjudicating the ambiguities of meaning in such language.

Re: You fall short of clearly defining what constitutes “refusing people because of who they are.”

If the identity attributes of the people are made a litmus test in a way that is not directly connected to the matter at hand. It’s OK for the Catholic Church not to ordain non-Catholics, for pediatricians not to take on geriatric patients, for drivers licenses to be limited to persons deemed old enough to drive, for the NAACP to refer Black people to run that organization, for the VA to treat only veterans (in non-disaster situations), etc. etc.
It is not OK for a general purpose and secular business to refuse to hire or do business with people because of age (with some few exceptions, e.g., alcohol sales), gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, political affiliation, etc. etc.

Again, Jon F, I think I agree, but you have carefuly tiptoed around my question.

Is the baker refusing to do business with gays, or refusing to participate in a sin?

Does the photographer have a “general purpose and secular business,” refusing to “do business” because of “sexuality,” or, is the photographer declining to participate on the same basis as a doctor declining to participate in an abortion?

You are trying to provide broad general language that can establish a broad general legal principle, which is admirable, but, you know darn well lawyers could use the language you offer to argue both ways.

How about, a commercial business may not refuse to hire or do business with people based on demographic ethnic, political, racial, religious, sexual or other categories, but may decline to actively participate in any expressive activity that is abhorrent to their own personal beliefs?

Re: Is the baker refusing to do business with gays, or refusing to participate in a sin?

No baker believes that baking a cake is a sinful act, or he would not be a baker to start with. Who the cake is baked for is irrelevant. (Baking a birthday cake for Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot would not be a sinful act). And that’s all the baker would be doing: baking a cake. Whatever happens in the boudoir later is not something the baker bears any moral responsibility for– and I cannot conceive of a moral system that could hold him accountable for the acts of adults over whom he exercises no control and about whose actions, really, has no direct empirical knowledge. (Elizabeth I bragged that she made no windows into men’s souls– that should be a motto for all of us)

As a practical matter gay couples who deliberately take their business to anti-gay people and then raise a stink in the courts are being anal orifices*. They would do better to repay the rudeness in kind– you don’t want to do business with me, I don’t want to business with you, and I’ll make sure all my friends and family know it.

* With some few exceptions– e.g., a case a few years ago where some business took a deposit from a gay couple, then claimed “moral” reasons to break contract with them– and refused to return their deposit.

You’re still missing the point, JonF. I agree that if a customer wants to buy a cake off the shelf, then the baker has no business asking their affiliations or proclivities, nor changing what is offered based on whatever may be obvious. BUT, if the baker is asked to put two penises on the cake, and frost it with “Adam and Steve together forever,” the baker has every right to refuse to make THAT cake. (I’d refuse to put any kind of pornography on the cake for anyone, come to think of it).

It is not discrimination against gay people for being gay, to say I will not participate in celebrating specific acts. Ditto for the photographer that chose not to work the same-sex commitment ceremony. Ditto for the Republican print shop owner that chose to forego making money printing Democratic campaign leaflets.